Bosh: 'I Haven't Been This Encouraged In A While'

“I haven’t been this encouraged in a while,” the seven-year veteran, who leads his NBA team in scoring and rebounds, said after practice yesterday. “Before it’s been tough, not winning as many games and kind of leaving things on the table. But this year, we can really start pushing ourselves over .500 and see where we can get at by the end of the season.”

Bosh is on his way to a stellar season, heading to career highs in every significant category and a shoo-in for his fifth consecutive all-star appearance next month. But having led bad teams in the past, he’s much more interested in leading a good one, numbers aside.

“My success depends on team success,” the 25-year-old forward said. “At this point, numbers don’t really mean much. Leading up to all-star weekend, and after, it’s about getting wins and making the playoffs and stuff like that.”

After tonight’s stern test, Toronto then goes to Milwaukee to face the Bucks on the second night of a back-to-back – a situation in which the Raptors have only won once this season.

But thanks to a strong finish to the first half of the season, they can approach their mini road trip with confidence.

“[Before,] we would have a little bit of doubt,” Bosh said. “An ounce of doubt is really going to show on the court. Now, we’re stepping on the court and we’re, ‘Okay, we can beat these guys.’

“You have to have that mentality.”

It's good to see CB4 and the rest of the team confident about the rest of the season. You can see the confidence when they hit the court.

I've said it before and I'll say it again-if the Raps are successful this season (i.e they are competitive in the playoffs), Bosh isn't going anywhere.

That's the trick isn't it. Any team can make the playoffs in the easy I mean... East. The problems come when you start playing... off... On the bright side, for each of the top 4 teams, there are some weaknesses we might be able to exploit.

Boston's big 3 are getting creaky and other teams that play DEFENSE seem to be beating them handily. If the raps can do so as well, then they have a chance at least, despite Boston having our number for the past zillion years.

The Cavs have Lebron... and that's it. We present matchup problems for them for several positions and if we can make Lebron play 1-5, then we have a decent chance of playing a good game and winning. Even if Lebron goes off for like... 40-12-10, he needs several other pieces to come up big to win. Shaq? Z? Anthony Parker?

Orlando.. is tricky... VC is the king of all wildcards because he can kill his own team or kill ours on any given night. Hopefully he's too lackadaisical to get anything done, but playoffs is a different ball game and he might turn himself on just to cause trouble. Orlando is also full of other weapons, but outside of Rashard and Dwight, they're not particularly reliable. We know how this goes. Get dwight fouled out (yeah yeah) and for the love of god, stick someone on JJ Redick! Is anyone else tired of him getting career games against us?

Atlanta scares me the most.. hopefully they get taken out of the playoffs by some other team before we (hypothetically make it past the first round and) have to face them. Their athleticism is ridiculous and they could just take us on that alone. The only thing is that right now, they are slumping for some inconceivable reason?? But yeah, I don't see us winning a series against them.

This sounds like a very happy and optimistic Chris Bosh. I like it. He should be happy, his team is playing really well right now and he's a large part of it. Here's to hoping for a strong move at the deadline and a strong drive into the playoffs. Round two suddenly seems like something that is attainable if they play hard on D.

Interesting to note that on last nights Magic - Lakers game they commented a couple of times that the Magic really miss Turkoglu on the offensive side. That they miss his passing and distributing the ball vs VC's shoot only capability. I think that there is a lot of truth in that. Nelson, their starting PG, is more of a combo guard and more effective when he is shooting rather than passing.

This sounds like a very happy and optimistic Chris Bosh. I like it. He should be happy, his team is playing really well right now and he's a large part of it. Here's to hoping for a strong move at the deadline and a strong drive into the playoffs. Round two suddenly seems like something that is attainable if they play hard on D.

What can we do at the deadline that would be strong? Evans is gimped, and everyone else that has some value is a contributing piece to the team in some way. What can we do to bring back a quality piece without giving up what's clicking right now?

What can we do at the deadline that would be strong? Evans is gimped, and everyone else that has some value is a contributing piece to the team in some way. What can we do to bring back a quality piece without giving up what's clicking right now?

Hope some team decides to tank the season and unload somebody's big contract.